


Like Fallen Flower Petals on the Water

by DarkrystalSky



Series: Love and Change [2]
Category: Dorohedoro
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M, more like alternate interpretation of canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:21:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24788404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkrystalSky/pseuds/DarkrystalSky
Summary: "You know something about Ai," he calls for her attention. "You said so when I almost got killed by him. He's our…?"Haru doesn’t know what expression hercoreis wearing at this moment, so so she prefers not to turn around and show it to him. She’d said those words as she thought Haze had already died, she hadn’t planned to save him and having to explain.She’s buried that part of her long time ago.And yet…“Don’t go near him.” She tells him, but it’s also a warning to herself. “You can’t save him anymore.”
Relationships: Haru/Kasukabe | Haze
Series: Love and Change [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1721011
Comments: 7
Kudos: 47





	Like Fallen Flower Petals on the Water

**Author's Note:**

> Idea born from a convo/conspiracy theory that was discussed on the Dorohedoro Discord server. Big thanks to Jack, Bunya, Bunn and Merit for the theories and ideas.

He approaches her from behind. Wind is moving her long black hair like strands of silky seaweed; the air smells like fog and gasoline, unpleasant and somewhat nostalgic.

"You know something about Ai," he calls for her attention. "You said so when I almost got killed by him. He's our…?"

Haru doesn’t know what expression her _core_ is wearing at this moment, so so she prefers not to turn around and show it to him. She’d said those words as she thought Haze had already died, she hadn’t planned to save him and having to explain.

She’s buried that part of her long time ago. _And yet…_

“ **Don’t go near him.** ” She tells him, but it’s also a warning to herself. “ **You can’t save him anymore.** ”

-

Haru has never felt such joy and hope and terror at the same time in her life. She stares at the test results and covers her mouth, sobs wracking her lithe frame with waves of unpleasantness.

She looks at her husband's back, sleeping at the other side of the room, and takes a decision.

It only takes a puff of her smoke: the paper wrinkles and ages, quickly reduced to dust before it falls to the ground. Haru walks out of the room and looks for her things, starting to pack up before Haze wakes up.

If she sees his face, her heart might waver and she might decide to stay. With a hand, she gently touches her womb and closes her eyes. “This world is cruel to us,” her voice is barely a whisper, full of emotions. “I need to protect you.”

Once she’s packed her things and written a short letter, she leaves a short kiss on Haze’s cheek and leaves for her homeworld. She’ll be back soon, she tells herself, once the kid’s old enough to protect himself.

-

The Devil hands her a card stained with blood and chuckles. Haru’s heart is beating so fast it might escape her chest.

She glances at the crib where her son, barely a few weeks old, is sleeping. His skin is darker than hers but not as dark as his father’s, but he’s already got the same deep black eyes and hair as her. He’s quiet and mellow, but she has a feeling it might not stay that way for long.

“ **It’s a once in a lifetime chance,** ” the Devil warns her, grinning.

“What am I supposed to do with my child?” She asks. They both know well she can’t take the exam and take care of the little one at the same time.

She can leave it in an institution. _But for a halfblood, if magic is weak or absent, there's only a terrible life in store._

_But living in Hole, the black dust in the blood might be a death sentence._

She looks at the Devil and swallows the lump lodged in her throat. _What a cruel and selfish woman I am, love._

“I want to make a deal, I’ll take the exam but-”

-

When she steps back in Hole, baby in her arms, she’s not there to stay. The child is crying, not having stopped screaming since Chidaruma removed his Devil Tumor. The blood flowing inside the little body will soon stop being tainted with black smoke. It was a painful decision, but necessary. Better to live as a human amongst humans than a pariah amongst Sorcerers.

She tries to walk in the direction of Haze’s house but her feet refuse to move. Will he hate her if she knows what she’s done? What she’s about to do? Will she have the strength to move forward after she sees him again of will she get stuck in regret forever?

She moves back, towards the city.

She sits on a bench next to the graveyard, trying to shoosh the baby. She can’t allow herself to care, but she can hope someone else will. So she left it as a message, embroidered on the blanket that she’s using to wrap him up. A name, a promise.

“You should give it something to chew on, my ma’ always did that when I started screaming.”

The voice that makes her look up is rough but kind, and she meets the eyes of a middle aged man with a backpack bigger than himself on his shoulders.

“I don’t have anything like that…”

He approaches, cautiously. “Can I?”

Haru’s hold tightens for a moment before deciding that, if this man wanted to harm her or the baby, he would’ve done so already.

She lets him approach and watches as he gently pulls a corner of the blanket and moves it close to the infant’s face. Tiny hands move and grab it, almost instinctively, pulling it to the mouth and the baby starts sucking on it, finally quiet.

“Told’ya, miss.”

“Thank you,” she murmurs, in a daze. “Um…”

“I'm Joe. Say, what’s that symbol on there?” He points at the kanji she sew on the blanket. “I never learned my words properly.”

“It means _love,”_ she explains. “Some good omen. A message? I don’t know…”

She has to leave. She can’t stay for long.

“Well, I have to go back home now. Good luck, young miss!” The old man waves at her and Haru follows him with her eyes until he approaches a tall apartment building. Before losing sight of him, she stands up and starts following from a distance.

-

He hears crying, as he’s sorting through his junk and counting the money collected during the day. It’s a familiar cry and wonders if the woman he saw earlier is back or lives nearby.

The crying persists until it starts to annoy him. “Has she forgotten already what I told her?” He heads to the entrance and the screams get louder, almost as they’re just outside the door. He peeks through the peephole but sees no sign of them, so he ends up opening the door.

And there it is.

Laying on the floor, alone. A quick glance to both sides confirm his dread: the woman is gone.

“For fuck’s sake, why did I stop and care?!” he grumbles, hesitating a moment before picking the bundle off the ground as gently as he can. “I’m too old to be a dad.”

The kid stops crying as soon as he’s in his arms, and the old man’s heart skips a beat. “Goddamnit,” he looks at the kid with teary eyes. “Maybe I can be a granddad, though.”

No matter how many time he tries, he can’t write the complicated character on the birth certificate form, so he ends up writing the word in katakana. “It’s the only thing she left you, it might as well be your name.”

The kid chews with his few teeth on the blanket corner.

“Welcome home, Ai.”

-

Haru cannot lie to herself. Being a Devil is _amazing._ Her mind is constantly high on serotonin, she has access to any kind of magic she wishes for, she’s almost omniscient about everything happening in Hell or the Sorcerer’s world. The only thing that almost bothers her is the deal she made with Chidaruma: the head of the Devils forbid her to go back to Hole to see her family, as part of the deal.

But she is _happy,_ immortal and powerful and happy. With not a worry on her mind.

So she doesn’t notice at first when _they_ appear. They are an organization that is seemingly wrecking chaos in the Sorcerers’ world, killing the most powerful Sorcerers with unnatural ease. She investigate on them out of curiosity when they approach her old house in the Hydra Forest.

And there she sees _him._

Her core shudders. Emotions improper to a Devil such as herself, but even though a cruel and inhuman light shines in those black eyes she _knows._ And Chidaruma does too, she hears in the way he chuckles when they watch over the group.

He’s stealing other Sorcerers’ magic, implanting their Tumors inside his own brain. A feat impossible to any other Sorcerer but he can. _A body that was meant to be, yet never was able to cast magic._

In a weird way, probably influenced by her Devil status, Haru’s almost _proud._

She ends up selling him her house for the cheapest possible price.

-

At that same house, some years later, Haru meets another she’d given up on seeing again. Her husband is surprised, but unfazed by her radical transformation. _He still loves her._ She shows herself just in time to save him from a fire, but by then he’s already seen the statue’s face. _He knows the boy’s face too._ She’s not too surprised to find out their paths ended up crossing after all, she’s somewhat glad they did. Nothing in his words makes her think he _knows_ the truth.

For what she knows, their son is now dead, anyway. She knows he went back to Hole and never came back. She’s perturbed when he appears again a few days later, almost out of nowhere, to kill En himself.

And then Chidaruma declares a bet. A bet on whether he will destroy the world or be destroyed by it. She chooses to align with those who think he’s going to die.

The world is in disarray, but she amuses Haze by _“helping”_ him find the boy. And they do, they find him in a shitty apartment covered in blood. They’ve almost reached the place and Haru dreads their meeting when the _monster_ attacks. A living Curse, a paradox that shouldn’t be. She starts singing to chase him away, with such intensity even Haze loses consciousness.

She saved him _because him dying there would’ve been a boring ending._ This is what she tells Chidaruma and she _knows_ he doesn’t buy it, but he doesn’t punish her either so they’re fine continuing as if nothing changed.

 _She keeps lying to herself and to Haze_ until the latter manages to slip away and it almost kills him. One look at the foolish artificial Devil project and he was immediately _“How can I help?”_

_Like father like son._

-

“Listen,” she’s in terrible pain, every movement, every thought. They’re a dying mass of bodies who can barely move. Even if they’re top class Sorcerers, they’re in no shape to fight. “Naraku,” she calls, “where are you?”

A muffled voice answers from the pile.

“Naraku, you have the magic of the chrysalis don’t you?”

The pile stops shuffling and moaning, as if every single former Devil stopped to listen to her in hope she has a plan. Haru looks at Haze, now a husk of his former self, a puppet of Hole, twitching and grunting on the floor. “That lizard head guy, he might be our hope.”

“We saw him absorb the sludge without being affected,” another voice says, she doesn’t recognize it.

“But he’s too weak to face that monster.”

“What if Naraku could give him a Devil Tumor, with his magic, would that make him strong enough?”

There’s silence and some chuckles. “It’ll take more than a Devil Tumor to give a human the ability to cast magic. Even your husband’s shoddy attempt only succeeded because of Hole’s power. It’s pointless.”

 _They don’t know._ She realizes only Chidaruma knew of her secret, her shame, her sin. “He’s a Sorcerer,” she admits. “I asked Chidaruma to remove his Devil Tumor when he was a baby so he could live in Hole.”

The silence that falls is heavier, she feels the weight of her words fall on the group, but she only looks forward. _Haze...forgive me._

“In that case,” another starts to chuckle. Haru thinks it might be Top. “It could work, together with my magic. We might get him to be strong enough to win the bet for us.”

 _Of course, the bet._ _Oh, to be a Devil again, not to have to deal with those pesky feelings, to chase them away and be happy again._

“Let me do the talking.”

And Haru witnesses her mistake being corrected in silence. Once again, for a selfish reason. 

She watches him fight. _And she feels so proud._

-

“You never answered me, you know?” Haze says just before he leaves Hell once again. They’ll see each other again, Haru knows that.

She’s immortal and he doesn’t age. Chidaruma isn’t around anymore to force her to follow stupid rules and they have _time._

“ **What?** ”

“About Ai, _he’s our…?”_

Haru’s smile widens. “ **Aren’t you smart enough to have already figured out the answer?** ”

He doesn’t say anything and his smile doesn’t waver even when he sighs. “Well, I suppose I do…” he looks outside as the spirits of the dead keep raining from the sky. There’s a bunch of them, now that the Sorcerer population has been cut in half by Hole’s rain. It’s going to be entertaining to play with them.

-

After going back to the hospital, he doesn’t tell them right away. He finds Nikaido and Kaiman’s expressions of shock, when they see him working like nothing happened, _delightful._

Haru didn’t tell him outright, but he _knows._ And they might not see it from the outside but his smile turns genuine when he looks at Kaiman. He doesn’t look like the boy he used to know or the man he briefly met at the manor, but it’s _him._

_And he feels so proud._

“Ai,” he walks towards him to hug him, or try to, his arms can’t even go around his bulky frame now. “Welcome back.”

After a moment of hesitation, he feels Kaiman awkwardly reciprocate the hug. “You too Doc, welcome back.”

**Author's Note:**

> They do look alike, don't they?


End file.
